We're in an otherworldly Albuquerque at the start of Sunday's Breaking Bad. In a montage that looks shot underwater at points, we finally see some long-hoped-for teamwork among Walt, Mike, and Jesse. Granted, it's evidence-destroying teamwork necessitated by the shooting of a young witness at the end of the last episode. They appear to be getting ready to melt not just the kid's dirt bike but the youngster himself by way of acid. So much is possible when your partner is an ex-high-school chemistry teacher. And it's not like Walt believed this would be without collateral damage.

That task done and the new triggerman retained, if not promoted, we find Mike apparently leaving a message in a park while under surveillance. But it turns out the note is for the gloved DEA man. They're on to him, but Mike's got them bugged, and I don't know — the guy just doesn't look worried.

The same can't be said for Skyler, who hasn't not freaked out in a scene this season, or just about anyone else this episode. Here she's visiting her infant, who's taken refuge at the in-laws, then breaks down the moment her sister asks her "How's it going?" Anna Gunn's scenes are so well-acted, they're in the running for Most Uncomfortable Moment in a patently, intentionally, appealingly uncomfortable show.

Also out of his comfort zone: Jesse, who just doesn't seem to have the stomach for kid-killing. First, he punches the triggerman in the noggin really hard, then he seems to be, well, profoundly upset when news of the missing child comes on the news during a break in his meth-cooking. Never mind how many kids Jesse has already orphaned from his life's work. A bullet is quicker and, I guess, more guilt-inducing. After Walt gives Jesse the night off, the latter stands and listens to the whistling Walt as he goes about his work, not a care in the world, not least of all a murdered boy. Jesse, as he must be at least once a season, appears to finally be on to Walt.

In the next scene, Mike and Jesse simply quit the meth operation. No notice, no discussion of stock options. Just "I'm out." "Me, too." A few DEA tails really separates the wheat from the chaff, Walt discovers. Where is the retirement-with-gold-watch plan of days yore? Mike and Jesse have already discussed selling out their pre-cook supply to some shady former competitors in Phoenix for $5 million a piece. Sounds good, but Walt knows he'd thereby be parting with $300 million in meth revenue. He doesn't like these numbers. "Pennies on the dollar" he calls it, citing a Social Network-style rip-off he suffered in college after founding then quitting a now lucrative software company. He won't part with his share of the methylamine, which seems to throw off Mike's arrangement with the shady "Declan" at one of those desert-side business meetings that narcotics traffickers are so good at staging.

Whatever other accolades posterity will bestow upon Breaking Bad, its writers will be known for having staged some of the most wonderfully awkward home-cooked meals in television history. This time, amid business conflict, Jesse is the one in the hot seat at the Walter White broken home. His attempts at being polite over dinner are returned with Skyler's confession of her affair. Walt wanted Jesse to see this, so his former student will understand that his putative meth empire is all he has left in the world. Even his children have prematurely left him.

Mike is far less sympathetic. Backed by a pistol, he informs Walt that the transfer of methylamine will take place with or without him. "I've never seen someone work so hard not to make five million dollars," Mike says, shortly before zip-tying Walt to a radiator to prevent him from trying to stop the unauthorized sale of his third of the organization's precursor. Not exactly a step forward in business negotiations, it's a move that might even make Gordon Gekko cower. But an ex-cop knows how to get listened to. And, of course, a deranged villain like Walt knows how to outsmart him. So he basically gives a MacGyver seminar in making a blowtorch.

What Mike needs in order to outsmart anyone is a lawyer. And in anything-chaser Saul we get the performance of the evening, as he files a "restraining order" against the DEA for its surveillance of Mike. "He's just not that into you." The ploy works, and the feds blink, which gives Mike enough time to return to a now-empty headquarters and discover he's been screwed over, once again, by Walt. But Walt claims to have a solution by which "everybody wins." Peace comes to the meth world? Here's thinking not.

--Doug Fine is the author of Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution. A short film about the book is at dougfine.com.